Interview: Job Entails More than One Role

Release management is quite time consuming, similar to project management. So I find it odd when companies feel that they need to create a role that is really two or three roles. I can understand if they were much smaller in size, but they shouldn't be expecting people to have all the experiences they are looking for. Sure, I can fake it to land the job but I am still a loser that the company cares that I be more honest but will choose the guy who was most likely faking it.

I actually had an interview with a company that was hiring a release manager but expected that person to also code, deploy, and handle change management. I made the mistake of saying that is a lot of work for a single person (I also confirmed that this is a single person role, and not a team of people sharing all the responsibilities). Oh, and I also forgot to mention that the role is also a management position that will have future direct reports in a year or two (which really means 2+ years), so they are also looking for someone with direct report experience.

In the corporate world (I worked for two fortune 10 companies), each with the responsibilities they listed are handled by multiple individuals at full-time capacity. There are people who does change management full-time and coding full-time and plenty of managers who do not do any of that level of work. Deploying is something some developers have to do if there are not enough resources, and none of them enjoy doing that. Plus, a lot of release management is also during off-business hours.

So, I was honest and explained that it was a lot of work for a single person, and that it would be difficult to find someone that really wants to do all that much less someone who has the experience of each one. Of all the release managers I have met, I think only one colleague and myself had development backgrounds. I have had no RM managers with development background, nor worked with one. We also had to work with a team of change management people.

I think I wasn't selected because I had no direct report experience even though I gave them some of my leadership roles. The reason is that seemed to be the low-energy part of the interview. The interview was at least able to fake excitement over my other skill sets.

The other day, I saw the role was re-posted again on the job boards so I guess they haven't found a person yet. A year and a half later, the position is still available.

Work Life: (Exempt) My Personal Advice to Avoid These Steps on Your Yearly/Periodic Review or Interview or Status Update or Self-Evaluations

I have been working professionally for 15+ years, and I have coached quite a few colleagues and friends what I have learned the hard-way. Many who struggled with promotions or raises have found success with my suggestions.

For this article, I'm going to use a scale of 1-5. 5: Beyond expectation; 4: Meeting expectation; 3: Sometimes expectation; 2: Well below expectation, possible suspension; 1: Likely to get fired soon. Some companies have more points; some put different names to them; some also in reverse order. In my personal opinion, they all basically boil down to this type of model based on the results of my reviews.

This is also primarily for paying jobs where the work is not very well defined (exempt, no overtime pay) versus most hourly jobs (non-exempt). My experience is also wholly in the white-collared world. This may also work for blue-collared work too.

Give Yourself Full Score if You Do Not Know Your Benchmark

If you do not know your benchmark for scoring, give yourself the full score even if you believe that you deserve a 3 or even a 2. Force your employer to explain to you why you do not deserve a 5. 

The only exception to this is if your employer already gives you feedback on a regular basis. In that case, make sure that you fully understand what is being asked. You should make sure that you do understand when you receive those feedbacks. But if it is too late to fill in your self-eval, then put in a higher score. Don't put it too high as you may appear that you didn't get anything out of your regular reviews.

I have also never experienced nor heard anyone experience any negative effects of giving themselves a 5 even if it is obviously not a 5 work. Still use some judgment on whether your manager is the type to take offense. My work has always been 4-5. I do get some 3s but they are primarily for skills I do not have the opportunity to do. The most common one is improving company core values. Which I believe they default for everyone. But I still give myself a 5 just to hear my manager tell me that it is basically defaulted to 3 for everyone. This is when you learn this is whole exercise is quite pointless. But since it is required, I suggest everyone to make use of this to get as much information as they can from it.

Do not mistake that the score is for you to guess what you think the company thinks of you. This is what you think of yourself. If you believe you meeting expectation, then give yourself that score.

The main reason for this is because most managers also have no clue. Your problem is if you give yourself a 3 and a non-deserving person gives himself a 4, then you lose out. The manager won't even look or reconsider. You are automatically filtered out. HR has even less clue. Most do not even know your name.

Last is that it may even be potential that your work is a 5 but you don't know it! Maybe you thought all that training was normal, but you don't know that you produced the best candidates. Another scenario is that your group outperforms another group. You may be average in your group but still outperform another group top performer. As mentioned earlier, let the company tell you why you don't deserve it because they will happily let you keep your 4 even if they believe you deserve a 5 or even a 5+ because 4 is cheaper for them. 

Keep Track of Your Own Activities

Keep track of as many activities as you can do without impacting your work, because you are bound to forget them by review time. By activities, I do not mean just big projects. I mean meetings you hosted, important meetings you attended, any exceptions to your normal role, people who trained (or partially trained) even if it was only 30 minutes, documentations created. Many people I have coached assume these are small tasks so they do not record these information.

The problem is that some of these small things amount to big things. The difficulty of tracking these is that it is too late by the time it becomes a big thing. For example, I had to do a presentation on our internal processes. Managers loved it and had me present more. My roles have been development or process management, and no one else in my role or level presented. So by the time I had my review, I can only said that I spent significant amount of time training. Which they down-played because what is "significant"? When I started tracking numbers, this became much easier to present and leverage myself to my needs.

Ultimately, you are trying to justify your time. There is approximately 2000 (50 weeks of 40 hours) hours of full-time work in a year.

Also see Give Managers Ammunition.

Give Managers Ammunition

Most managers have absolutely no idea about your quality of work. A decent one will at least vaguely know if you are better than someone else. If you think it is difficult to give yourself a number score, imagine having to give a number score to someone else?

So help your manager fight for you. This is where your self-evaluation and your list comes in handy.

In reality, most managers don't know what to do. So it makes it easier for your manager to stand out if you give him some information that helps him leverage for you.

Start with not lowering your score. If you give yourself a 4 but in reality you are a 5, it is an uphill battle for your manager to explain why you should be a 5 when you gave yourself a 4. The manager also plays a similar game with their managers. Not all managers know where they stand among their peers either so you may be shafted for having a 4 in an outstanding team versus a 5 in an underperforming team. At least with 5's, the discussion can be had.

When that discussion can be had, it is typically pretty easy for managers to impress too with data. For example, 2000 promotions may be normal for me but that sounds impressive to upper management. Especially if a peer group does not provide any numbers at all. 2000 can be a crappy number in reality, but the perception is that my manager appears more prepared. The more data, the harder it is for a competing manager to leverage the benefits. Number of resolved tickets, requests, time-to-completion.

As I have repeated a couple times, this can only be done if that information is provided.

Not Everything Needs to be Monetary Compensation

With large corporations there are limits to a raise, the timing may not be correct. With small companies, they may not have the funds. Or your manager may be weak in fighting for your values.

Negotiate training time, bigger budget (or get a budget) to purchase work related products or software, promotion in name only (even just a jr to sr, or level 1 to level 2; make up a new position if one doesn't exist... this is free to the company), etc.

These are investments that you can use in the future when money becomes more available (whether that money comes from your current employer or future employer). If current employer does not honor your value, then other companies can at least justify the higher salary.

Don't Work Overtime Except for Exceptional Reasons

At least start reducing your overtime hours. You will never be able to reduce your hours until you decide to. Do not wait until you have a new member in your team.

Why? The reason is quite simpler than you think. No one tracks the hours of salaried employees. Most managers barely know the hours. Even if they do, most likely they are also working overtime. Because no one knows, upper management only compares your work to the calendar.

So let us say that you did 100 tickets over 80 hour work week. Because upper management don't know the hours, to them that is 100 tickets per week. If they hire a new person and assume that person is your clone, if you both work 40 hours, you still get 100 tickets completed. To upper management, they do not understand because now you are completing the same amount of work for the double the cost.

Along similar reasoning, if you were given a raise for working 80 hours and you are now working 40 hours, then upper management cannot justify your salary. So it is important that salary is in-line with your base hours otherwise it will be very difficult to ever return to normal hours.

If you are already doing extreme overtime, the path of least resistance is to slowly reduce your hours and let things fail. This requires you to set the proper expectations and "upset" some people.

Business is not perfect so some overtime is acceptable if it is seen as an exception. Once that overtime becomes a household name, then things get more complicated. Even reducing salary is more complicated than you'd think.

Overall, personally, I think it is good for both company and employees that expectations are set properly for the long-term. This is a difficult track because most managers do not know how to overlook short-term gains over long-term gains but it kind of starts with a person. "It's all business" will dictate that if someone is willing to put themselves in position to do more work for same or less pay, they will continue to exploit it.

This was a long round-about way of saying to avoid using overtime as a reason to get a promotion or a raise. Use overtime to get a bonus or other one-time benefits so that it is not tied to your base work. Once it is tied to your base pay then you will have a difficult time separating the two if you ever wish to work normal hours again.

Exception is if you plan to continue to work overtime for the remainder of your tenure of that job. I specifically use job and not employer is because one of the easier methods to get out of the downward spiral is to apply for a new role. The farther the role is from the original, the easier to start over.

Autism Spectrum vs me

I surely do relate to some of the key items of the low-end of the autism spectrum especially when I look back into my past.

I am told that I didn't start speaking till I was four. I do not make eye contact. There are stories that I did not look up at the teacher till second grade. Supposedly, it was such a big moment the first time that I did. The teacher personally stopped by our home to report the "happy" news. I was always very quiet till 15-16.

I probably don't have it, but reading some of the articles help me understand myself in a way where others fail to satisfy my questions. I believe I do a very good job of masking normal behavior.

I believe the biggest factor to my drive to understand to be normal is my insatiable need to understand the world. I ask a lot of questions to that point where people would put their hands up and walk away. Even if I agree with their point of view, I will play devil's advocate to better understand. So this is my drive to go against some of my natural tendencies.

I still struggle with some things like eye contact. When I really get into a conversation, I stop looking... at anything. I couldn't tell the person's facial expression, other conversations, time, place, etc. I get so hyper-focused that I do not sense anything else. Nowadays, I have to conscientiously remember to look at the face. I will naturally look at the mouth at best, but usually will just stare into space. I am really not sure where I am looking at once I am engrossed in a conversation.

The more background noise, the less I am able to understand people. I am terrible when there is noise. Not that it bothers me, but I cannot "hear" what people are saying. Sometimes I wonder if I am deaf but I hear sounds. And I can hear very minute sounds that others cannot hear. But when there any sort of sound, my ability to hear what people are saying drops exponentially while others can hear perfectly fine. I have had little to explain this phenomenon, but the article by Burgess has the best example thus far. On her "spectrum", there is a category for sensory filter. I believe this is where I am rather weak on.

I also struggle with expressing what I feel. I think the problem for me is that I really do not feel anything, especially things to an extreme. I do not really hate, nor do I really love. Things just is. People's fascination with art and music is lost on me. I still go to museums, and I just fail to see what other's see. There is no particular music that I love, none that I hate. I am unable to really mean it when I say that I totally love this song, music, artist, etc. I like the beat, the rhythm, the lyrics, but I approach it more analytically. For me, it is amazing how well they can maintain a beat, how they can change the beat but keep the sound coherent or lyrics that uses limited words that rhyme yet still send a message. Although I do not have extremes, I do have preferences but the reasons seem to still be consistent. If the lyrics is repeated too often (bores me) or distracts me from whatever I am focusing on, then I do dislike the song. But I have not heard anything where I would want to ever consider ripping my ears off. I don't even plug my ears or even change the radio station.

To me bad music is like food that has a bad after-taste. There are food that tastes good and there is food that does not taste good. And that pretty much is the summary of my taste palate. There is very few foods that I dislike. Even fewer where I refuse to eat. But there is nothing I wouldn't try for free, and I would hate to waste money by paying an exorbitant amount of money for something that tastes good. Yes, it tastes better but is it worth paying 2x to 5x the food and labor? I am perfectly fine with eating unsalted boiled chicken. It does not taste great, but not worth $10 for an alternative.

I still consider myself a loner. Ironically, I was told that I was like a social butterfly at the office. This is due to the fact that I go around and talk to people (about work or their social problems). But for me, this activity is extremely exhausting. But I "force" myself because I want to understand. And I learned that people do not share as much information when I do not share some information.

I do get frustrated. This is usually when I am unable to understand more about the situation. But I think the blame really goes to people who do not make very coherent logical steps. Uusually there is still some reason they do things that are more self-centered, for their big ego, etc. I just do not understand why they think that way. I get most frustrated with people who have no interest in self-improvement except to manipulate others for their own life improvements.

From what I have analyzed about people, I find that I have a very different approach to the world. And my biggest worry about this thought is that everyone seem to feel that they are different (like how everyone thinks they are right or good). So how do I actually gauge how different I am?

http://themighty.com/2016/05/rebecca-burgess-comic-redesigns-the-autism-spectrum/